Open radio competition produces new Harris model

Harris RF has introduced the Falcon Wideband Team Radio, which the company says is the first non-developmental solution to address requirements of the Army's Rifleman Radio and Nett Warrior programs.

The Falcon RF-330E is a wireless radio for connecting front-line soldiers to the tactical Internet to facilitate command and control. The radio delivers real-time position location information and multiple talk groups, while also supporting additional combat applications. The RF-330E is a non-Cryptographically Controlled Item that meets Type-1 secret and below information security requirements. The radio hosts the Soldier Radio Waveform, which delivers simultaneous voice, high-speed data and real-time position location information.

Harris developed the new radio under its commercial business model in response to the Army's request for non-developmental Rifleman Radio and Nett Warrior solutions. The Army is now including compliant non-developmental solutions for these two programs, leveraging investments made by industry rather than spending the taxpayers' dollars.

"The new Harris radio demonstrates that competition works,” said George Helm, president of Harris RF Communications’ department of defense business in a company statement. “Given the opportunity by the DoD, Harris developed a breakthrough team radio with significant performance improvements over the current JTRS program of record radio. We also are investing in solutions for next-generation manpacks and vehicular wideband radios using this same commercially oriented business model."

The RF-330E utilizes the same widely fielded battery and charging systems as the Harris Falcon III AN/PRC-152A, and was introduced and demonstrated at the recent Army Expeditionary Warfighting Experiment at Fort Benning, GA. Soldiers deployed the radio during the exercise in a configuration supporting the Army Nett Warrior end-user device.